Sometimes a career, or indeed the true course of life, can turn on the most sudden and insignificant events. That is certainly what happened to me. I’m going back to May 1967, a mere week before the famousSummerofLove in California. Perhaps indeed that event had a more global effect, but what happened to me that summer is key to the way that the rest of my career and my life developed.
On the day in question, I had a day off from my work as an assistant economist with the Gas Board. I had recently bought a house in Llanishen, Cardiff and I was about to get married to Laura Miles, a girl from Garnswllt, Ammanford. Life was good, and simple enough.
A school and university friend of mine, Arwel Davies, happened to be free, and so we decided to go down to Penarth for a walk.
As we walked along the prom, enjoying a chat and the sea air, a car pulled up beside us. I knew the driver well, it was Jack Evans, a Labour Party candidate in Carmarthen in the 1955 General Election. I didn’t remember him from that electoral campaign, but I came to know about him, and to understand that he came within three thousand votes of Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris, a famous and distinguished Liberal, former Regional Director BBC Wales and Commons Deputy Speaker. Jennie Eirian was the Plaid Cymru candidate. Later, Jack became Megan Lloyd George’s agent when she became a Member of Parliament in 1957, in a by-election following the death of Morris. It is interesting to note that Morris defeated the Labour Party by less than 500 votes in both the 1950 and 1951 elections. Close battles are part of the history of the Carmarthen constituency.
After some polite and friendly small talk, Jack asked me, “What are you doing for the rest of the summer?”
I told him that I was getting married that August. His answer came back, without taking any notice to what I had said.
“Have you considered venturing into the world of politics at all?”
Budding Politician
I had been interested in politics since I was a young boy. It was in the air in that part of the Gwendraeth Valley where I was brought up; the most westerly point of the South Wales Coalfield, mined for the hard coal – the anthracite – not the steam coal. This was the miners’ radical cauldron, where politics was discussed on the coal face, in the shop and the pub. And such a place would, of course, be a stronghold of the Labour Party.
But more relevant to me personally, I went to Cardiff University in 1962 to study Economics, Government and International Relations. This is where I met Neil Kinnock for the first time, although the two of us never got on at all. There was an obvious distance between us, which would reveal itself in Westminster ten years later. I’m sure that both of us were at the complete opposite poles of the Labour movement in Wales. Barry Jones, the broadcaster and political correspondent, was also there at the time, as was Vincent Kane, the influential broadcaster. There was a political tint to college days.
Whilst I was in college, President John F Kennedy was assassinated. That caused shock waves throughout the world and was one of those popular political events that had an overreaching effect. I will never forget the Labour Party’s response at the time, or at least, of one of the Party leaders; George Brown who was their spokesperson on foreign affairs, with Labour in opposition. He appeared on television to respond officially. He had had too much to drink and made a real mess of the interview, much to the embarrassment of the Labour Party.
During the summer holidays between 1962 and 1965, I worked first in the Carmel Quarry and then in Cynheidre colliery. This was real hard work, with workers whose education was mainly from the school of life but they were the salt of the earth. Working shoulder to shoulder with them was a pr
